Critics Blast North Korea Deal as Rewarding 'Bad Behavior'
Rice today rolled out the administration's defense of the new deal, stressing that unlike the Clinton arrangement it was "multilateral," with heavyweight guarantors in China, Russia, South Korea, and Japan in place to pressure North Korea against cheating or backing out. Further, Rice and others noted, the deal is intended to be only a way station to North Korea's permanent and verified atomic disarmament.
Another vulnerability of the Beijing deal is that it does not expressly include North Korea's uranium enrichment program–an alternative path to the Bomb that the administration has alleged exists but which the North denies. Rice, as well as the top U.S. negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, say the North Koreans have been made to understand that they will have to fully account for the program. To reach the final phases of the deal–with most of its benefits–Pyongyang will have to provide a declaration of all of its atomic facilities and then allow it to be verified. Skeptics have long expected the North to try to conceal some of its nuclear assets in its intricate tunnel system or to fudge its accounting of the plutonium produced so far. Any major breaches that are discovered could stop the deal in its tracks, and supporters of a deal with the North have long feared that hard-liners will use the search for weapons in a game of "gotcha."
Pyongyang clearly is also assuming that at least some of its assets frozen in a Macao bank in response to U.S. financial sanctions for alleged counterfeiting and money-laundering will soon be freed up. The sanctions have become a favored hammer of administration hawks. The financial dispute has begun to gum up even legitimate transactions with the North, in addition, experts believe, to complicating Pyongyang's illicit moneymaking ventures. Rice says that separate U.S.-North Korean talks are aiming to resolve the problem within 30 days. But if Pyongyang is dissatisfied with the degree to which the United States responds to its demands on sanctions, it is likely again to resort to a delay in the nuclear negotiations.
Unresolved, as well, are worries that North Korea, in the end, will not be willing to completely rid itself of nuclear weapons. Still, for the first time, it has agreed to practical steps that will start testing that proposition.
"This is still the first quarter. There is still a lot of time to go on the clock," says Rice. The question is whether the game has already gone on too long for a satisfactory end.
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